"You may try with all your strength, but when a sapling has been bent crooked you can't pull it straight." "But you aren't crooked, Molly," he answered, kissing her throat above her open blouse.
She glowed at his kiss, and for one instant, it seemed to them that their spirits touched as closely as their bodies, while the longing and the rapture of spring drew them together.
"You're mine now, Molly--I've got you close," he said as he held her.
At his words the rosy waves upon which they had floated broke suddenly on the earth, and turning slowly they walked hand in hand out of the field into the turnpike.

A strange shyness had fallen over them, for when Molly tried to meet his eyes, she found that her lashes trembled and fell;--yet this shyness was as delicious as the ecstasy from which it had come.
But Nature seldom suffers such high moments to pass before they have been paid for in physical values.

As the lovers passed into the turnpike, there came the sound of a horse at a trot, and a minute later Jonathan Gay rode toward them, leaning slightly over the neck of his bay.

Seeing them, he lifted his hat and brought down his horse to a walk, as if prompted by a sudden desire to look closer in Molly's face.
Her rapture evidently became her, for after his first casual glance, he turned again quickly and smiled into her eyes.

Her look met his with the frankness of a child's and taken unawares--pleased, too, that he should so openly admire her--she smiled back again with the glow of her secret happiness enriching her beauty.
In a moment Gay had passed on, and turning to Abel, she saw that a frown darkened his features.
"He had no right to look at you like that, and you oughtn't to have smiled back, Molly," he said sternly.
Her nature leaped instantly to arms.